


Bluer than Midnight

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief, Keep on keeping on, No Sexual Content, Poe has a lot of love to give, Post-Movie, but a lot of confused yearning all around, unresolved oedipal tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 06:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13094718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: "Strange, isn't it," Leia says while they wait, "so much sacrifice, over and over, and yet the same needs persist. Food, and fuel, and peace."Poe and Leia go on an errand to keep those in theFalcongoing and try (not very hard) to avoid engaging with the fallout of film events.





	Bluer than Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Title and spirit from The The, "[Bluer than Midnight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYVxX4D4kjQ)"

She waits for him at bottom of the ventral ramp. The weather on this moon is unpredictable, ranging, according to BB-8, from "stormy" to "very stormy" to "tempestuous, look it up!", but just now it is cool and bright. The haze cloaking the atmosphere is pearlescent, pretty enough if you can forget how toxic it is.

Like the rest of them, Leia wears heavy trousers and soft boots. Her light jersey is tucked into her waistband, which is itself too big for her. That belt is cinched tightly.

Her hair is more silver than brown these days, two simple braids looped low at the back of her skull.

"Are you all right?" she asks. Nothing escapes her, not even his slightest hesitation.

"I'm not getting used to this," Poe tells her, shrugging on his jacket and flipping the lapel up against the chill. "You all plain--no. _Sturdy_ and sensible like this? Not right."

In all the time he's known her, her style has varied, gone from sleekly minimalist to militaristic chic, but this is different. This is _ordinary_.

She touches her throat. "All that...frippery. I never wanted that. As a girl, I fought like a wild thing. Mother had to fight and bribe to get me into anything halfway presentable."

"Well, you wore it well."

"I changed my mind later." Nodding, she looks, if anything, amused by the compliment. "Thank you."

"Really well."

She frowns up at him, nose wrinkling. "Is there something you're trying to say here, Poe?"

"No," he says. "Maybe? I don't know."

Her lips purse, her gaze sharpening. "Unlike you to be at a loss for words."

He takes her arm and covers her hand with his own. "We're all in new territory, aren't we?"

In the harbor settlement, they first have to make their way through the open-air bazaar, threading down narrow aisles and around enormous stalls overladen with stock. Leia buys them an under-ripe ember melon to share; when he protests, she takes a bite and chews and swallows first before replying.

"I daresay we can afford a street snack," she says.

"It's the principle," he tries, but she pushes a larger piece into his mouth.

"Eat," she says, wiping her fingers on the front of his jacket. 

The flesh is livid, the flavor wan compared to what it should be, but it's still the first fresh produce Poe has had in over a week. He's still chewing, his head swimming with sensation, when he catches up with her again. Now she's browsing a stall of tea accessories, enormous serving pots down to thimble-sized tasting cups.

"How much for the samovar?" she asks, pointing at a huge blue and gold pot.

"Ma'am--" Poe starts, then stops when she shoots him a glance.

" _Leia_ ," she tells him.

He still slips up; he expects he always will, occasionally if not frequently, particularly when stressed and harried. "We have an appointment," he reminds her.

"I'm well aware of that, thank you," she says and turns her attention back to the tea merchant. "Are your blends priced by the gram or miltep? Either way, they are shockingly high. What are you trying to get away with?"

The proprietor smiles and strokes her chin-tails as she settles into a haggling stance to match Leia's own.

Three streets out of the market, they are finally heading for the financial complex. The building is in sight when Leia touches his wrist, whispers, "two behind, one ahead," and ducks into a narrow lane along a fetid canal.

Poe spots the two easily. Skulking, pointedly not looking at each other, they have that haggardness and hollow eyes he associates with everyone in the Order. They're so young they have angry pimples along their jaws, sprayed over their foreheads.

The one on the left elbows the other; he draws a blaster while his companion unsheathes a blade.

"Aw, c'mon, I just want to talk! Lonely out here, I could use some new friends!" Poe ducks right when knife boy slashes the blade downward. Blaster guy stumbles as he shoots wide. Poe blasts him in the arm, watches him topple into the water and splash away. The other snarls and lunges clumsily. Poe catches him by the collar, kicks away the knife, and dangles him over the canal.

"You all right?" he calls to Leia.

"Exhilarated," she replies, closer than he'd thought, and on his other side. She presses her blaster into his captive's chest. "Who sent you, little man?"

He's gasping, twisting in Poe's grasp, his eyes wide.

"Security Bureau, maybe?" Poe says, emptying the kid's pockets with his free hand. "Not troopers, look at this gear."

"No!" The kid goes stiff. "We're not...we just wanted. _Please_."

"What did you want?" Leia asks.

"Saw you in the stalls, made you for good marks!"

"For pity's sake!" Poe drops the kid onto the cobblestones. It's all he can do not to shove him into the water. "Pickpockets?"

The kid scowls and says, "We're _gangsters_."

"Oh, well, yeah, that's different!" Poe kicks the wall. "Fucking held up by children, this is great."

Leia crouches beside him, gathering up his weapons. "We'll take these," she tells him, passing them to Poe. "You don't want to do this."

The kid sneers. He starts to spit, _bitch_ , but Leia laughs and presses something into his hand before rising and stepping over him to join Poe. "Shall we? We do have an appointment."

Though they're late, disheveled, and desperate, somehow Leia makes a good impression on the financiers.

She has pawned most of the jewelry she wore at the end, but there are still Solo holdings in the mid-Rim that she can mortgage, still some rings and cuffs to stand as collateral for outrageously usurious loans.

The reckoning came, and then another, and more after that. They have shed their wounded, everything left in the _Falcon_ 's hold, and just about every debt, favor, or shred of goodwill any of them could recall.

"Strange, isn't it," Leia says while they wait for the credits to be transferred, "so much sacrifice, over and over, and yet the same needs persist. Food, and fuel, and peace."

Some nights back on the _Falcon_ they play Heart's Desire/Fondest Wish. A droid generates a random number and the survivors go around the bunks, naming in turn what they'd most like to blow imaginary credits in the given amount on. A ranch in the grasslands, a penthouse flat in Albarrio's capital, three spouses and seven fat healthy babies, a buffet that never closes. Purebred pitten bright as starlight, vintage seven-string hallikset with original tuning knob.

Poe usually passes on his turn. He has what he needs; aside from his father, everyone he loves, everything he ever wanted, is aboard the _Falcon_ with him. That is, of those who are still alive. The ghosts of those he has lost, all the chances he missed or wasted, they would fill several more freighters. Now _that_ would be an impressive fleet, very impressive.

Leia pawns a plain ring back in the market and insists on taking Poe to dinner. He thinks he ought to be suspicious of this generosity. Conditions are so lean, they can't possibly afford to indulge themselves.

But the inn is very plain, the food rough and oversalted. The beer, however, is fantastic. They have a room to themselves in the back, furnished with games and low, squashy couches.

Leia serves up another dish of watery soup. "Did you know, the ruler of Naboo was elected?"

"The girls?" Poe shakes his head. "Young women."

"Indeed. Very talented women, all of them. Lockpicks and strategists and fighter pilots among them." She cocks her head. "I would have liked that."

"My mom flew with one," he says slowly, remembering. 

"Yes," Leia says. "I know."

The memory completes and he flushes, looks away in embarrassment. "You were there." 

They drink late, past closing time, so far past curfew that it's now closer to the end of curfew than the start. She beats him at sabacc twice, then challenges him to darts and beats him again.

"Unfair!" His hands move around his head like anxious birds, nothing to do with him. "Unfair, you have the Force! I got nothing!"

"Nothing?" She smiles. 

"Nothing."

Her smile curves deeper and her eyes look so warm. "Hmm. You wear it well."

"Thanks," he says, agreeing because she's Leia and smiling and if he keeps talking, playing, flirting, he won't stop to think. If he keeps drinking, he won't be feeling anything other than this, giddy and sweaty and utterly delighted with the world.

"Extremely well," she says, as if to clarify.

Poe throws out his chest and lifts his chin. He's well past his prime, he knows that, but he also knows that Leia sees a person's real beauty, true worth.

When she touches him, however, her fingers are cold, her expression grave. As she reaches, he sees her again, a sliver of ice gliding through the firestorm, returning to them, transformed and glittering with power. He sees her on the bridge, icicle-calm and straight, shooting him.

He crumples back down to the table, dizzy and lost.

She should have finished it there. Since then, what has he been? Better, perhaps, but no longer himself. 

On the edge of the wide couch, Leia bends over to remove her boots. Poe slides off the table, crashing to his aching knees, and crawls forward. He pushes her hands out of the way and works loose the laces himself.

"Poe," she says, so softly she might be clearing her throat. "Don't."

When he looks up at her, she cups his cheek. "I want to."

"I'm not..." Her eyes drift closed for a moment. "Not to be knelt to. Not any more, never was."

"No," he says and eases off first one boot, then the other. She wears two socks in order for the boots to fit. "This isn't about etiquette. Expectation, whatever the hell it's called. Obligation."

"All right," she says, agreeing. To what, he's not sure. Maybe she understands better than he does his own thoughts. 

"Don't know why the Naboo call it royalty," she murmurs, "when they're elected. My mother on Alderaan, on the other hand, truly was regal."

"Why?" he asks, stuck back several moments ago in the cold and terror, facing her blaster. He ticks forward hours, to the transport, to the long fall toward Crait.

On the transport, after he woke up, she held his hand. Lit in the glare of Holdo's sacrifice, she tried to tell him that her generation had failed, that their children deserved better than this, than to be still fighting the same war. He'd shaken his head then, vehemently. He was seeing double, exhausted and thrilled and _wounded_. Humbled, maybe, but humility was neither here nor there.

"Is he...?" he'd asked then. He couldn't look at the _Supremacy_ fracturing in the quantum blaze.

"He's safe," she had replied. "A survivor, his father used to say." When she looked right at the dazzle, her face went mask-like, unlined and uncanny. "That used to be a compliment."

"Why?" Poe asks again now. Why all this talk of Naboo, and flying, jewelry and fashion? "What am I supposed to do with all these stories?"

"You think I'm telling you these things for your benefit?" Her expression is a small glimmer between the fall of her braids.

"Aren't you?"

"Oh, Poe," she says. "Is that really what you think?"

Uncertainty growing, he nods. It spreads and forks, frost over his thoughts.

"I'm not," she says. "I don't have anything to teach you, not any more."

He gets a pang at that, then another. But when she adds, "maybe I never did. Maybe that was the first mistake," he says, as firmly as he can, "no. That was never--"

"I'm telling stories for myself," she says, cutting him off and squeezing his hand so tightly. "Different lives, other paths. Maybe..."

"Things couldn't be different," he tells her. He's nodding again, perhaps still, he probably never stopped. When she touches his cheek, traces one of his eyebrows, he goes still and quiet.

He rests his head against her knee as her fingers move into his hair, gentle on his scalp. "Come up here, at least."

He goes to the other room to piss and rinse out his mouth. His tongue is thick and briny. When he returns, she's lying on her side, head pillowed on one arm, looking out the narrow window up close to the ceiling.

He hesitates while she looks him over. His hands are open at his sides, his thoughts slipping out of reach. He would ask what, _who_ , she sees, but he's neither Han nor Ben.

"Sleep now," she says eventually.

They lie together, Poe curved around her back, both jackets spread over them. His arms are wrapped around her, her hands over his. She is small and soft against him.

"Your mother would have my head for this."

He laughs, dry and hoarse. "Expect she would, yeah."

"No," she says, "not... _this_." Her fingertips stroke down his knuckles. "Though, yes, this, too. But for failing you. Not delivering the world she fought for. Not keeping you all safe. For that."

He wants to tell her that's not true. He wants to offer forgiveness that isn't his to give. All he can do is tighten his hold and breathe into the fall of her hair.

She isn't his mother. And he isn't Ben, he never could be. Fool that he was, he tried to be better than Ben, braver and stronger and _righter_. Fiercer and so devoted to her that she might forget her son. He wanted to make it up to her, ease her loss and disappointment, do more than compensate.

But that's not possible now. It probably never was. He sleeps holding her, mouth on the nape of her neck.

When the curfew ends, the morning is misty and sour. They hike back to the _Falcon_ , mission accomplished. They can eat and fly for several more cycles. They can keep looking a while longer.


End file.
